What Happened After

Chapter 17

"Are you going anywhere with this, or are you just here to be obnoxious with your retarded food analogies?" 

Chapter 17.

          “Shit!” Ruesso cried as our bench pulled up to the top of the mountain. We had been on the ski lift for about five minutes, waiting to reach the very top, and he had been completely fine on the trip up. That was, at least, until he saw the turnaround approaching and realized he had to get off soon. “It’s coming, what am I supposed to do?!”

          “Okay, relax,” I soothed. “You’re fine, look at all those people doing it up there with no problem. There, that kid’s like five. He’s fine. You’re fine.” I gestured over to where a young boy was getting off the lift with his dad, having no problems.

          “That’s easy for you to say—you’ve done this a hundred times already. I don’t even know how to stand on these things!” He wiggled his skis in the air and I reached over and steadied his left leg—the one closest to me.

          “If you shake them like that, your skis’ll fall off and they’ll make you go down there yourself to get them.”

          “Seriously?”

          “Yeah, mountain rules.” Those weren’t the mountain rules at all, but any opportunity to scare Ruesso wasn’t wasted on me. “Okay, here we go,” I said as we slowed down. “This is as slow as it’s gonna go, so when I say go, just step off the bench and slide down the little hill they have set up. It’s not steep or anything—it’s just to get off the lift, okay? Get ready.”

          Ruesso sucked in a deep breath as he shimmied his way up to the edge of the seat, preparing himself for I don’t even know what. The hill was literally a foot high, and there was nothing to worry about.

          “Go!” I cheered, pulling arm along with me as I slid off the bench with ease. Apparently, Ruesso hadn’t prepared himself quite enough, because he went down like a ton of bricks as soon as hit skis hit the snow.

          “You know what? Screw you and this sport. And this whole season!” he tried to come off as angry and intimidating, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would take him seriously from his position, sprawled out on the snow with his hat pulled down over his eyes.

          I couldn’t stop laughing as I helped pull him to his feet, saying, “Alright, Terminator, but you gotta get up; there’s another bench coming and they’re totally gonna hit you if you don’t move.” Ruesso grumbled as he half-crawled out of the way of the incoming chair.

          It was Saturday morning, the first official day of our Ski Weekend. My parents were at the lodge getting breakfast for themselves while I taught Ruesso the ropes of skiing. Back when I used to bring Kale and Lauren up to the mountain, there were no problems whatsoever, because they were both veteran skiers like myself. My parents were the same way, so I wasn’t worried about meeting up with them later. Ruesso, however, was a completely different story.

          We skipped the bunny hill, which was his idea—he didn’t want ‘the winter sport baby professionals’ down there to make fun of him. Instead, we skipped straight to the next run, which was called ‘Ariel.’ I, personally, didn’t see the logic in Ruesso’s argument, since the ‘professional’ skiers would be up on the higher slopes, and not on the bunny hill like he imagined, but I kept that to myself as we braved the lift.

          During the ride up, he had held onto the bar to the right of him for dear life. It was hysterical seeing him like this, honestly. Big Scary Ruesso Van Avery, rebel from the other side of the tracks, was petrified of a little moving bench. I tried to explain to him that no one had ever fallen off the lift at this particular mountain, but he wasn’t having it. I wasn’t sure why he even decided to come with us on this trip.

          Apparently, he didn’t know either, because after he caught his breath after moving out of the way of the benches, he groaned, “I don’t even know why I let you talk me into this.”

          “Me?” I barked. “I asked you ONCE if you wanted to come. You said yes, and that was it. There was no ‘talking into’ anything, from either side. In fact, I probably should have talked you into staying home.”

          “If I had known what this would have been like, I would have definitely taken that offer.” He still wasn’t fully off the ground; he was in a seated position in the snow, with his knees tucked up under his chin like a little kid. “I’m not going down there,” he threatened now.

          “Rue, come on, you have to get down the mountain one way or another. Here, I’ll show you, it’s really not that hard. Up.” I reached out to grab his hands and he hesitantly took them, after staring at them in front of his face for a few moments, eyes wide. Jesus, he was really scared.

          “Alright,” I said, positioning his skis parallel to each other on the ground. “So the way you’re standing right now is called ‘French Fries.’ That’s what they call them when they’re teaching the little kids how to do it.” At that, Ruesso scoffed, but I ignored him. “So you keep your feet like that when you want to move. Now take your feet and—“ I nudged the front of his skis together with my own, “Put them together like that. That’s called ‘Pizza.’ You see how your skis kind of make a pizza shape in the snow?”

          By now, he had probably realized I was making fun of him, because he snarled at me and moved his feet back to his original French Fry position. “Are you going anywhere with this, or are you just here to be obnoxious with your retarded food analogies?” he whined.

          “Basically, French Fries means ‘Go’ and Pizza means ‘Stop.’ Remember that when you try to do either of those things. If you want to turn, just lean in the direction you want to go. It’s best if you take really, really wide turns, so you kind of zig-zag down the mountain instead of a straight shot. You don’t want to kill yourself.”

          Ruesso looked up at me at that last part, and then looked away quickly. Boy, I sure knew just the wrong thing to say at all times, didn’t I?

          “Anyway, so I think you’re ready. Do you feel ready?”

          “Yeah, I think so,” he responded. “And this slope’ll take me straight down to the lodge?” He peered down the mountain to the lodge below.

          “Yep. Well actually, it’ll take you right down to where we got on the lift. You remember seeing the people at the bottom there, next to the bunny hill?”

          “The what?”

          I sighed. “The winter sport baby professionals?”

          “Oh, right, yeah. Okay, so I guess I’ll see you down there?”

          “You sure you don’t want more help?”

 

          “Nope, you’ve proven enough, thanks.”

          “Okay,” I said, beginning to move down the mountain. Wait, I thought. Proven enough of what?

          I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about what Ruesso meant, however, because I was off. Within seconds I was whizzing past other skiers and snowboarders, spewing fresh powder in my wake, and it felt good. I had thought it would be harder than it was, coming up here without Kaleb or Lauren for the first time in several years, but it wasn’t, actually. Up on the mountain, I felt at home, and I couldn’t wait for the rest of the weekend. I could only hope Ruesso could enjoy himself half as much as I was. I felt really bad for him; he seemed so out of his element up here.

          I was proven wrong by him once again when I finally reached the bottom of the slope. I moved my goggles up off my eyes and turned around to check up the mountain for the sight of him. It was then that I realized what he meant when he said I had ‘proven enough’ for him.

          Because there, coming down the slope, was Ruesso, skiing smoothly and beautifully, gracefully jumping over shallow hills with ease, and all-around looking like he had done this a million times.

          He wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. I had just been hustled.